Engender blog
GUEST POST: Empowering women to challenge stalking through technology
![Graphic with a light green background and left-aligned quoted text in dark green which reads "Although increasingly we hear of technology being used to abuse women, technology can also be a powerful tool for victims/survivors to challenge the abuse and find justice. This was the idea behind FollowItApp, a mobile app we created [...] for women experiencing stalking in Scotland." The quote is attributed to Natalia Equihua, Scottish Women's Rights Centre. In the top right hand corner of the graphic is the Engender logo, a circle with an equals sign in the centre, in bright green.](siteimages/Blog/resized/natalia-followit-blog-square-1080x1080-400.png)
Stalking is form of violence against women that is often hidden and subtle, but is no less devastating and traumatic. This week is National Stalking Awareness Week, and Scottish Women's Rights Centre's Natalia Equihua has written a guest blog for us on the FollowIt app for women affected by stalking.
[CN: mentions of stalking, harassment]
Much like domestic abuse, throughout the pandemic we have seen an increase in stalking incidents; this is not surprising given that stalkers are often partners or ex-partners. Not only that, but according to a recent survey by the Suzy Lamplugh Trust, online/digital stalking has become more common with 75% of victims experiencing both online and offline stalking since the first lockdown.
Although increasingly we hear of technology being used to abuse women, technology can also be a powerful tool for victims/survivors to challenge the abuse and find justice. This was the idea behind FollowItApp, a mobile app we created at the Scottish Women’s Rights Centre in collaboration with media co-op for women experiencing stalking in Scotland.
To understand what led us to create this app, what makes it so unique and how it supports women in Scotland, it’s important to explore the context of stalking in our country.
F-words: Gypsy/Traveller women in Scotland
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Dr Lynne Tammi has worked in the field of Community Development for over three decades. Currently she is the Interim National Co-ordinator for Article 12 in Scotland - a young people-focused human rights and equalities NGO - and a freelance Human Rights Consultant and Advocate. She is of Irish and French Traveller heritage, and writes for us here about the links between language and discrimination.
In considering the language used to categorise and indeed denigrate Gypsy/Traveller women, an examination of the role of the media in the ‘othering’ or cultural denigration and exclusion of the Gypsy/Traveller community en masse is crucial.
Creators of ‘folk devils’ and drivers of moral panics who with “a lexicon of verbal abuse [keep up] a constant level of bigotry” (Cohen, 2002), these virtuosos of meaning-making construct ‘conceptual maps’ - a system, if you like, to code (or de-code) the signs and symbols of who or what are to be assigned the status of 'outsider' - and present them to us as both truth and threat. Consider the following Mail Online (2011) reportage on what was to become the forced eviction of the largest Gypsy/Traveller site in Europe, at the time:
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